Growing your business

We use cookies to give you the best possible online experience. If you continue, we'll assume you are happy for your web browser to receive all cookies from our website. See our cookie policy for more information on cookies and how to manage them.

Cancer

Cancer is a diagnosis that no one wants. Many people may not think about the cancer care that's offered in a private medical insurance policy until they need to use it. However, as cancer organisations publish some of the most well known health statistics - it's a subject that can help highlight the value of having a PMI policy in place.

Discussing a serious illness, like cancer, is rarely a comfortable experience for you or for your clients during a meeting. We know how hard it is to talk about this devastating illness: sadly, more than 20% of our claims spend has been for cancer in 2015. However, some statistics can really bring home the value of having a healthcare policy in place if the worst happens.

Sharing information, raising awareness

Statistics (collated by Cancer Research UK) may help illustrate the importance of being covered against the risk of cancer:

1 in 2 people in the UK will be diagnosed with some form of cancer during their lifetime.

Cancer cases have increased by more than a third since the mid-1970s.

There are over 200 types of cancer, but four of them account for over half of new cases: breast, lung, bowel and prostate cancer.

Lung cancer is the most common cancer in both men and women.

After lung cancer, breast cancer is the most common cancer in women.

After lung cancer, prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men.

Being aware of ‘customer cues’

Your clients may know, or have known, someone who was diagnosed with cancer. It may be a sensitive subject for them to talk about – so if you’re not sure about the way cancer can be treated, it’s a good idea to read up on the subject, so that you can answer questions about the condition (and the cover we can provide) more confidently.

To help you support your clients if they want to know more about our cancer cover, our Cancer Pledge page provides more information about the service we can provide for your clients and their employees. Our team is happy to talk through the cancer cover we can offer, if you have a specific query. Which targeted therapies we cover, for example; or what type of care we support, post-diagnosis.

Useful questions to ask individual or family clients

Although it’s a sensitive subject, it may be useful to touch on the subject of cancer during a client meeting. With statistics such as those above, these questions may help prompt a discussion that leads easily to the value of having a PMI policy with excellent cancer cover options in place:

Would you like to have cover that helps pay for treatment, if you were diagnosed with cancer?

Is cover for clinically proven and licensed drugs important to you?

Would you be interested in a policy that doesn’t have limits on the type or amount of specialist nursing needed for cancer?

Is it important to you, to have a policy that helps you get back on your feet after treatment – as well as offering treatment for cancer?

You can read more details about the improved cancer cover we offer in our Cancer Pledge.

Useful questions to ask business clients

Oncology (cancer) accounted for over 9% of our corporate claims spend between 2011 and 2013. It’s a difficult subject to discuss, but in a conversation with corporate clients these questions may help:

Have you thought about the effect one employee’s diagnosis of cancer could have on the rest of your staff?

Do you have support from an organisation that could help provide counselling, if one of your employees was diagnosed with cancer?

Would you like cover options that give you flexibility, over how much you spend on offering cancer cover to your employees?

Would you like to have different levels of cancer cover in place, perhaps for different levels of employee?

We're here to help you answer any of the questions suggested on this page.

Contact us if you'd like more information about the bespoke cancer cover we can offer your large corporate clients or the options available for individuals.